Types of Coverage

The Public Transit API offers three different levels of coverage: real-time, timetable and estimated.

Coverage Types

Real-Time

Real-time information enables the consideration of current vehicle locations or sudden service disruptions to provide the most up-to-date expected arrival time of transit services at a specific station. In the context of routing, real-time information is considered within the route and journey calculation process.

Timetable

The Public Transit API sources detailed transit schedules from transit agencies. These schedules may come in the form of actual times (for example, a train leaves a station at 09:18) or scheduled frequencies (for example, the bus runs every 20 minutes between the hours of 08:00 and 10:40 AM). In addition, timetable transit coverage areas are a more complete representation of the public transit networks available in a given city or metropolitan area.

Estimated

With this level of support, the Public Transit API provides our best forecast of travel time based on the transit network configuration, stop density, vehicle type, and the hours of operation of a given transit system when actual, granular transit schedule information is not available. It should also be noted that there are cases where these coverage areas are only partially complete and may not include all of the public transit options that serve a city. This may include cases where the Public Transit API supports one or more but not all bus routes, for example.